A Christmasy (ish) Thought

I am not a religious person. I don't belong to any particular spiritual tradition or practice and I have ongoing internal debates about all of the big issues surrounding religion. But ever since I was a kid, my favorite part of doing the Christmas decorations was setting up our Nativity.

It wasn't a fancy one, but the manger had a loft and at some point my mother had bought a little bag of straw, so I was very excited to pad the manger floor with it. I don't know what happened to the original Wise Men but they were replaced at some point before my memory with three plastic Wise Men in a slightly smaller scale the Family. This freaked me out (even as a child, I had the librarian's need for precision and order) so I always set them far enough away from the Family so that their diminutive stature was not so noticeable.

Even now, far removed from those days, I still love Nativities. There is a church on Staten Island a block or so away from the Staten Island Zoo that does a live Nativity the first three weekend in December and driving by is one of my favorite holiday traditions (especially last year when they had an alpaca in the little petting zoo with the sheep and donkey! While it's factual inaccuracy irked me [librarian!], I figure it was acting as a substitute for a camel and let it go since I was just so excited to see an alpaca.). And as if I needed another reason for "Raising Hope" to be my favorite show on TV, they did a (twisted) live Nativity episode a few weeks ago that made me spit coffee out my nose. So you get the idea.

I took me a long time to figure out WHY I love Nativities so much. I was already working as a children's librarian at the time when it hit me.

To me (and this is my own sense of it, not at all grounded in any theology and I mean no offense) the Nativity represents the love and promise into which every child should be born. All children should be viewed as such a precious gift to the world.

Years ago, I was processing library card applications for the girls' detention center I was working with and I noticed one of the girls was named Precious. And I had to stop and think for a moment about the series of events that had to happen for a baby to be born, given the name Precious and fifteen years later, for the girl that baby became to be in jail. Without even knowing the real story, the idea of it broke my heart.

So I write all of this as a reminder (as much to myself as anyone else) that children (teens included, and adults, too--we were all children once!) are precious. And as much as they drive us crazy, they are each a gift of hope to the world.

This holiday season, be thankful for your own precious gifts and the gifts of those around you. May they bring our world peace in the coming year.

:)

Cash in the Coffee Can: $166